


I wanna be king in your story (I wanna know who you are)

by PardonMyManners



Series: Power Over Me [2]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Angst, Arranged Marriage, Closure, Dany and Jon were in love, Dany is not the villian, Drama, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Past Relationship(s), Platonic Relationships, Romance, and now they aren't, fic features a resolution of their relationship, most of the fic is interactions between jon and dany, some Dany/Jon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-07
Updated: 2018-12-07
Packaged: 2019-09-13 19:01:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,092
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16898172
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PardonMyManners/pseuds/PardonMyManners
Summary: “Your Queen deserves her crown, I think,” Daenerys says at last, as if reading his thoughts, and takes his hand. He’s startled to see there are tears in her eyes.“Thank you,” he says hoarsely and, on impulse, dips his head to press a kiss to her cheek, emotions threatening to overwhelm him. For all that had transpired between them, all the hurt and regret, he is grateful for her, for these final moments between them, like the gentle closing of a well-loved book before it is finally set aside.--Jon travels south to see Daenerys marry Aegon, coming to terms with his own marriage and his place in the world.





	I wanna be king in your story (I wanna know who you are)

**Author's Note:**

> Alright guys, first, I did my best with the tags, I'm treading in dangerous ship war territory here and I know its a tough line to walk but I tried my best, so while I'm open to tagging suggestions, can we please all attempt not to be awful to each other? 
> 
> This is a follow up one-shot to my fic 'Everything I hold dear (resides in those eyes)' and I highly recommend reading that work before reading this one -it won't make much sense otherwise. I made minor time frame adjustments to 'Everything,' as well, to suit the parameters of this story a bit better. This fic covers Jon's time in Kings Landing with a bit of interaction between he and Sansa once he returns. There may be a third part to this series, but we shall see.

With the war over, Ghost has taken to spending most of his time in the Wolf Wood outside of Winterfell. It’s fitting in some ways, Jon supposes. A bit like laying down a weapon after the end of a conflict, except that this particular weapon is more an extension of himself, a missing limb, just another piece of himself he’s had to leave behind. In the end, he’ll be little more than a skeleton beneath an iron-spired crown.

Still, he supposes one of them deserves to be free.

His old companion is not completely gone. When Jon has the occasion to enter the wood, Ghost often finds him. Even if he stays within the shadow of the trees, Jon can feel him out there, racing through the brush, tracking him. He’s like a sword waiting to be picked up again, and as much as it grieves him, Jon sometimes finds himself thinking wistfully of battle and conflict; at least in war he knew who he was.

Jon can feel Ghost now as he leaves Winterfell to head south, his heart and mind heavy. Guilt, he’s found, is a subtle, dark poison that builds in the bloodstream almost without notice until suddenly you can hardly move, hardly breathe beneath the weight of it.

The dire wolf traces him through the trees, following the King’s Road for several miles as Jon wavers. He wants to be out of sight of Winterfell, which feels more a monolith to all his failings than a home. He is running, not from _her,_ but from himself.

Eventually, he calls a stop to the procession –Gods how he misses the days he could travel without an escort- and dismounts at the tree line. The dire wolf waits, red eyes flashing in the early dawn light. He does not come to Jon but waits for him to approach, his boots crunching loudly over the fresh snow fall. His men, with their polished armor and bright banners, stay behind without having to be told and Jon is grateful, he feels as tender as a fresh bruise this morning, made all the worse because it’s one of self-infliction. So many of his scars have been self-induced… and he wonders if that is simply the way of things or if he is just particularly idiotic. He fears the answer.

Ghost extends his snout and Jon places a gloved hand atop the wolf’s massive head. He can feel the warmth beneath the fur and leather, feel that familiar pulse of connection, of destinies tied. Jon glances back toward Winterfell, where it looms in the distance, and his heart aches. He hadn’t always been so bitter, so numbed, and it’s like fighting a powerful current, trying to wade his way back to the man he’d once been, or at least the one he’d always wanted to be.

“Watch after them for me, Ghost,” he murmurs. “Gods know I’ve made a mess of things this time.”

The hurt and disgust in Sansa’s eyes feels branded on his very soul, made all the worse because her reactions, her condemnations, were completely warranted. He’d spent the tentative, fragile years of their marriage trying to avoid that guilt, that sense of shame, but the past had a habit of coming back with a vengeance. Jon had long since established a wonderful tradition of not understanding what a thing meant to him until it was lost, and he has a sense he’s lost something precious indeed this time.

How, he wonders, had he managed to stray so far from the man he wanted to be?

Ghost huffs beneath his palm and Jon retracts it. _Maybe,_ he thinks, _it’s because I’ve never really known who I am_.

He glances once more at Winterfell, thinking of the woman residing within who had once been his sister, then cousin, and now his wife. Strange how she has come to wear so many faces in his memory, a different one for each phase of his life it seemed. He thinks of the son they share, thinks of the contentment he so often feels between the two of them. A contentment that terrifies him.

 _I may not know who I am, but it’s time I found out_.

“Watch over her for me, boy” he tells Ghost, half wishing he could just disappear into the forest with him, but aware, as he’s been over the years, that he has a larger role to play and it’s pointless now to fight it. He’d hoped destiny would grow tired of him by now but he still feels its tug, its cursed influence.

He leaves Ghost there at the edge of the woods and mounts his horse. No one speaks to him; there’s a nervous hush over the journey, everyone acutely aware of what seems to happen to Northern Lords when they descended into King’s Landing. This Lord, however, is fire touched, a dragon born in a wolf’s skin. He will not burn.

* * *

Every man has a breaking point. He’s seen plenty of men meet it at the point of a sword, but some men are woken by battle, not cowed by it. The good ones are, he thinks, the best men aren’t born to kill, to take life.

Jon thought he’d long since found his breaking point –he’d _died_ for fucks sake. But that was before he met Daenerys.

Even after fighting the undead for what felt like a lifetime, he still hadn’t truly learned that there were worse things than death.

His life seems a blur of war and death and violence. Looking back, tracing the events that made him, it seems as though his childhood belonged to a different man, as though he’d been born fighting, sword in hand and death in his shadow. Or maybe, when the Red Witch drew him from the cold darkness, it had been a true rebirth, a casting off of his old skin, leaving only a hard, brittle creature in its place.

Jon had never entertained a life in which he could be anything other than a bastard; once he’d set himself on the path to joining the Night’s Watch, it had been the end of any other dream. He had no visions of a home, a wife, a child, and presented with that and more… he flounders. There had been a moment… a shining, brief moment where he thought perhaps he’d found it, but he’d been a fool.

 _You know nothing, Jon Snow_ , Ygritte would have said, and she would have been right, as always.

For all that Daenerys loved him, her heart belonged to a throne of iron and blood and fire and there was no room for him there. Perhaps that is the role of Kings and Queens, the sacrifice and price of power, but Jon had been born a bastard, a well-bred one perhaps, but a bastard all the same.

Or so he’d thought.

To find out not only the identity of a mother he’d spent a lifetime longing to know, but to also discover a father he hadn’t thought to miss…he has no words for how such a revelation made him feel. How it has changed him. What it has taken from him.

Everything he’d ever known of himself is a lie. Everything he’d ever believed of himself, of his place in the world, of the people he loved, is little more than charcoal rubbings on fading parchment; easily brushed away and written over. He will never forget the look on Daenerys’s face the day the truth had come to light; the flash of open and bitter hostility she hadn’t quite been able to suppress. And there had been loss there, too, behind the lavender gleam of her eyes, the end of something she’d desperately hoped for.

No, Jon’s breaking point hadn’t been death, or war, or loss, it had been the day Daenerys chose an iron throne –or at least her perception of it- over him. Over _them_. In truth it was more the final wave of an avalanche that managed to finally bury him; a lifetime of wanting and almost having and then losing finally having taken its toll. How many wars did he have to fight? How many people did he have to kill? How many loved ones and friends did he have to lose, to earn just a moment’s rest, a moment’s comfort?

He supposes, now, standing far apart from it, he can understand, at least in part, her motivations. His claim is stronger, however much he doesn’t want it, and the people of Westeros knew him. He isn’t some foreign invader, the daughter of a mad man on the back of dragons, he is one of them, and a hero of the living, the Prince Who was Promised. But he has no desire to sit upon any sort of throne, least of all one among a people and court who have only ever brought his family ruin. No matter that his father was her brother, no matter that she was his Aunt –Gods knew the complexity of his relations now- it was her thirst for power, no matter how well intended, that had torn them apart in the end. He wants quiet, and rest, and she has only ever wanted glory.

And now that he has his peace, he is terrified, deep inside himself, that he will never be able to appreciate it, to enjoy it as he should. Terrified that he’s ruined it before it truly come to light and had the chance to grow roots, and now would never have the chance to bear fruit.

* * *

 

Once arrived, it’s nearly a week before Jon is called to attend the Queen. In that time, he manages to strengthen several trade deals with southern lords, acquire gifts for his entire family, and come to the determination that King’s Landing is little more than a rotting cesspool. He hates to think of Sansa here, walking along gilded halls and open sunshine that is darkened by cheap smiles and barbed words, but it is impossible not to.

She had walked these halls, filled these rooms, and sometimes he can feel her within them, see shadows of the girl she’d been, with all her innocence and wonder, before it had all been taken from her. For all her anger and his poor judgment, he is glad she is not here.

For all that, Daenerys seems to belong within the Red Keep.

 _She was born for this_ , he thinks as she enters the receiving room as beautiful as any woman who ever walked. His heart throbs feebly, but it is more at remembered connection and intimacy than at what exists between them now; distance and duty. It’s a pang of mourning, the final, gasping breath of something that had already died on the vine. In typical fashion, he’d done nothing to prepare for this moment, had prepared no lines or speeches, nothing that might articulate how things have changed between them and how they have not. He misses Sansa intensely in that moment, she would have known what to say, what greeting to give, what matters to speak of.

They incline their heads, studying each other in the warm sunlight, and Daenerys smiles. He thinks it is sincere, but it has always been difficult to tell.

“Congratulations, Your Grace,” he says with a small smile of his own. He has not yet met Aegon, his… _brother_ –such a strange, fragile thought- though he suspects Daenerys has her reasons for keeping them apart.

“Thank you… Your Grace,” she says with amusement, stepping to one side to pour them each a glass of wine into glittering crystal goblets that have been fashioned into the form of dragons. They are completely alone and Jon finds himself suddenly uncomfortable, unsure of himself. He’s never felt like a king, not truly, he feels even less so now, surrounded by gilded opulence.

He takes the glass of wine when it is offered but he does not drink it; he has never liked wine.

“Your Queen could not come?” she asks, sipping from her goblet and pacing toward the large open window, the breeze wafting through it fluttering gauzy curtains, and smelling of ocean brine and shit. Jon looks for some hint of coy manipulation in her eyes, in the graceful motions of her hands, but finds only honest curiosity.

“Sansa suffered here, she told me once that she would never return… I did not wish to cause her further pain,” he says, not meeting her eye. He had anyway of course; floundering under his wounded pride and his inability to articulate his feeling, his thoughts. He hardly understood them himself, especially when he was around her.

Daenerys must read something in his tone, however, because she says, “And you did not want her near me.” Perceptive, as always.

He sighs, lifting his head a bit and studying her face; it’s the face of a Queen, regal and carved of marble, a familiar mask, and one that he’s seen Sansa wear often. It chills him now to consider how similar they look in certain ways, how alike they are and yet how different.

“No, I suppose I didn’t.”

“She didn’t appear to care, about you and I that is.”

Shame pricks, low in his gut. “She may not have but, well…”

She smiles slightly and kindness leaks through cracks in the mask. “But things have changed.” She sets her goblet aside, clasping her hands before her in a familiar gesture of poise. “You love her, don’t you?”

Jon feels his cheeks heat and he sets his wine aside as well, still untouched. He had not expected to speak of Sansa with her. “I have always loved her.”

Her smile is amused as she paces toward him. “As a sister, yes, I know, it’s why you agreed to the marriage in the first place… but it is different now isn’t it?”

Jon holds himself very still as she reaches up a hand to cup his cheek, searching his face with her brilliant eyes.

“Yes,” he says, “it is different.” He hadn’t thought it could be, hadn’t thought he could find affection and comfort again, not with a woman who he’d once believed to be his sister. But Sansa, despite her calm exterior, drew men to her just as Daenerys did, and while it wasn’t the overwhelming desire and longing he’d felt with Daenerys, it was still sweet and warm and dear to his heart. So dear and tender he can hardly bear to speak of it, least of all with the woman who’d once splintered his weary heart in half.

She nods and smiles again and he thinks he sees just the smallest, slightest hint of regret, but it is gone in the next moment, so quick that he is not certain it was there at all. She drops her hand and steps away again. “I am happy for you then. You’ve a son, yes?”

Jon clears his throat his face burning where she’d touched. “Ah, yes, Robb, born nearly a year ago now.”

“An heir,” she says, and he does not think he imagines the wistful sound in her voice. “That’s wonderful, Jon, truly.” Her eyes, when she turns again, are guarded.

“Thank you.”

They study each other for another pointed moment, their twined past rising like a wave between them, before she turns again and motions him to follow. “Come, meet my intended.”

* * *

Aegon Targaryen looks like a King, with his fair hair that is a few shades darker than Daenerys’s –Jon wonders if it has been dyed for affect- and blue-violet eyes. To Jon he seems to embody all the tales he’s ever heard of Rhaegar, his father. Whether he is a pretender or no hardly matters, Jon thinks, for he has embraced his role so fully and so entirely that there seems hardly any point in questioning it.

He is fair and joyful, all the world his to enjoy and relish in. If Jon and Daenerys are world hardened, Aegon is as ripe and optimistic as a babe. Jon thinks, perhaps, he is the sort of king the realms need; a soul untouched by the horrors of battle and loss.

He takes to Jon instantly, and if he holds any malice toward him for his father’s betrayal of his mother, Jon does not see it.

“Brother!” Aegon calls from across the perfectly manicured gardens three days before the wedding ceremony, “Come! Let us enjoy a hunt!”

Jon stops and smiles, off kilter at a term he has hard time associating himself with. His brothers are all dead, even Bran, who is a stranger to him now though he wears a familiar face.

“I can’t, You Grace,” he says with a checked smile. “I’ve matters to attend to with my stewards.”

Aegon shakes his head. “You are so dower, brother. Dany told me you were a brooding man, but I say you just need a bit of sport. Indulge me, won’t you?”

Jon is surprised to find himself wavering. Aegon is a hard man to resist, as bright as a shooting star, and Jon wonders how long it will take for him to burn out. He suppresses a sigh. “Very well, Your Grace, just this once.”

It is a surprisingly pleasant afternoon, in all, Aegon eagerly relating the adventures of his youth across the sea, of how he’d come back to Westeros’s shores and met his Aunt, revealing a clear knack for storytelling. He asks Jon of his own adventures and exploits and Jon finds himself relating some of the… happier bits, though they often feel few and far between, and leaves out as much of the death and despair as he can manage.

“Your wife,” Ageon asks as they ride side by side through the woods outside King’s Landing, “What is she like?”

The question surprises him a bit, and he flounders for a moment. “She’s… strong,” he says at last, using the first word that comes to mind when he thinks of Sansa. “Stronger than me that is for certain, and very lady like, but... kind too.”

“And you… care for her?” Aegon presses and Jon studies his face, noting the furrow of concern marring his fair brow. Jon considers his answer carefully, suddenly aware of what the other man is truly asking after.

“We grew up as half-brother and sister and we… did not get on well. Her mother never approved of me, though I can hardly blame her, but it made things… difficult at times. The day Sansa found me at the Wall, well, I’d never thought to see any of my family again, and things were far better between us after. Marriage has not been easy but, well, yes I care for her… I care for her very much.”

Some of his regret and guilt must have leaked into his voice because Aegon gives him an assessing sort of look. “Daenerys told me of her affection for you, and it doesn’t bother me of course, it is the past and I’ve my own history of loves found and lost… I think, well, I think what matters is that we appreciate and make the best of what life has given us.”

Jon gives a rueful sort of smile. “Very wise, Your Grace.”

Aegon snorts divisively. “I know when I am being humored, _Your Grace_.”

Jon laughs and then sighs, sinking into his saddle. He feels better outside the city, beneath the weight of the trees; if not for the pressing and ever present warmth, he could almost pretend he were home. “No, you are right. I think… well, it is easy to get trapped by all the things one has lost and lose sight of all one has left.”

Aegon smiles and leans over to nudge Jon’s shoulder lightly with an elbow, causing their horses to dance grumpily beneath them. “See, brother, that’s what comes of brooding. I hear your wife is one of the most beautiful women in all the seven realms, rivaling my own Queen, surely a man could do worse.”

Jon thinks not of Sansa’s beauty, but of her hands, the soft press of them against his skin, of the scarcity of her lovely smiles, and the way she speaks with respect and warmth when addressing the common folk and the servants. He thinks of the fury and hurt in her eyes as she’d turned and fled the room before he’d left and the shame and anger that had kept him from making amends. He thinks of how he may have ruined any chance of happiness for either of them and prays that it is not too late.

“Yes, a man could do far worse.”

* * *

“You must wonder why I’ve chosen to marry him,” Daenerys says over the golden rim of her goblet. Her voice is pitched low over the music as couples dance before them in clouds of colored silks. Aegon is dancing with a pretty girl, hardly more than thirteen, from one of the lesser southern houses.

Jon does not miss that she has waited to say such a thing to him until Tyrion Lannister, her Hand, has been called away by some matter of business.

Jon lifts his own goblet, ale this time, but still too sweet for his tastes. “It is not my place to wonder.”

 She puffs out a small laugh and her smile is bright and sincere. “What a deeply political answer, Jon, I’m almost proud of you.”

“Sansa, has been an educational influence,” he says, smiling despite himself.

He misses her acutely in that moment, thinking of how she would have shone like the sun in this room of expense and frivolity. Then he corrects himself, recalling the night of Arya’s wedding as Sansa danced to the rhythmic, primal beat of drums and whispering flutes, her hair loose and shining like polished bronze, her eyes dancing with pleasure. For all that she looked a Tully, she had wolf’s blood in her veins, and this was not where she belonged. That night had changed something for him, changed something about the way he saw her, a feeling and awareness he hadn’t been able to shake.

“I can tell,” Daenerys says, one side of her mouth lifting. She is silent for so long, long enough for Aegon to have found another blushing and stamering dance partner, that Jon assumes she has decided not to elaborate. But then, at little more than a whisper, “I doubt he is my nephew, and I haven’t asked him to prove it to me with fire. It hardly matters, really. If I say he is Aegon Targaryen then he is Aegon Targaryen.” Jon nods vaguely in agreement when her eyes flash to his. “He looks rather Targaryen, I suppose, but it’s hard to tell, truly. He hasn’t your heritage, or your cursed support from the North, but he was becoming a persistent thorn. I have dragons, to be sure, but I am still a woman and a stranger.”

“The kingdom is prospering,” he remarks, and it’s true. In just a few short years Daenerys had managed to establish peace and interrelation among the nobility, though Jon supposes that Ceresi whipping out half of said Houses and Daenerys's dragons played a hefty part.

“As if that matters to the Lords that stumble all over themselves attempting to coral me into a marriage,” she says, voice laced with disdain, her eyes flashing dangerously across the room as if she expects assassins to spring from the dance floor. “Aegon is pretty and bright and well-meaning and generally foolish. He has no real wish to rule, only to enjoy the comforts royalty and breeding can provide.”

“So,” Jon says, setting his empty goblet aside and waving away the serving boy who comes to fill it for him, “you marry Aegon, quell any thoughts anyone may have of him sitting the throne in your stead, placate scheming lords, and marry a man who has no interest in politics or governance.”

Daenerys gives him a look he can’t quite name before shaking her head, amused. “Yes, I believe that sums it up. Are you... angry?”

Jon frowns. “Why would I be angry?

She gives him a disgruntled look and Jon sighs, wishing suddenly he _hadn’t_ waved the serving boy away. “Things were different then,” he says at last, no longer able to look at her. In truth, he has no wish to discuss it, their tangled past, though he knows that is likely childish.

“I was a fool,” she says, the harshness of her tone surprising him. “I thought I could rule alone, that they would let me sit the throne without a man to coral me. I could burn them all to ash, of course, but now that they know I will not, they grow bolder.”

“You deserve the crown, you earned it,” he says quietly, meaning it. While he has not always agreed with Daenerys’s methods, she is a far better ruler than Robert or Joffery or Ceresi, or even her own father, ever were. She'd done far better than he would have done, of that Jon is certain.

“As if either of us has ever gotten what we deserved,” she says and Jon can sense a sea of bitterness beneath her bright and gleaming exterior.  

Jon considers his words carefully for a moment. “What’s done is done… we’ve made the best of it, I think. I know I have certainly tired,” and often failed, he thinks dismally. “Do you… love him?” he asks, watching Aegon as he guides his partner gracefully through the steps, and wishing at once he hadn’t.

He does not wish to sound lovelorn or jealous, because he is not, not anymore at least. He is only… sad for her; for all that she’d nearly unmade him when she’d chosen her throne over him, he knows that she has been unmade a hundred times in turn and he wishes, now with the benefit of time and healing, that she might find some affection and comfort.

Deanery’s sighs, her eyes also tracing Aegon’s motions across the room. The soon to be King catches her gaze and throws her an affection wink, laughing and joyful, at home among the nobles who seems rather star-struck by him. “I suppose I do, at least in part, he is a hard man not to love,” she says and her tone is wry.

Jon chuckles, feeling more at ease. “Yes, I dare say he is.”

“You would not have been happy here, Jon,” she says then, and he has a sense that she is apologizing in some way.

“No,” he agrees, tone harsher than perhaps he’d intended. “I would not have been.” It is true, he would have and _does_ hate this place, but he will not let her think she did him some favor, betraying him as she did. For all that, he is truly not angry with her, not anymore.

She gives him a slightly distressed look, opening her mouth to say more, but Tyrion appears in the next moment, eyes darting between them with only barely concealed concern. The Imp had never approved of their relationship, Jon knew, and likely feared a rekindling of their romance. Jon wonders if Tyrion had opposed his queen inviting the Northern King south, for all that would have been a serious affront. Jon would not be surprised if he had.

“Come, my Queen,” Tyrion says with false brightness, “I have not seen you dance all evening and we dwarves, as you know, are _excellent_ performers. “

* * *

Three weeks after his arrival, and after attending far more feasts than he would have liked, the wedding takes place in the newly rebuilt Great Sept of Baelor.

Jon, who had never seen the original building, is momentarily awed by the vaulting structure with is brilliant mosaics and marble sculptures. Still, as he takes his place of honor near the seat of the High Septon and Daenerys approaches swathed in miles of white silk, as beautiful as the sun, he is grateful he and Sansa married beneath the trees of the Godswood, with the silver moon looking on. But he also finds that he is jealous of the tentative affection between she and Aegon; his own wedding had felt more like a funeral, the final nail in the coffin of he and Daenerys’s future together.

He wishes they could wed again, so that he might smile at Sansa as Aegon smiles at his bride, so that he might press a kiss as fervently to her hand as the one Aegon presses to Daenerys’s. She deserves that, he thinks, heart aching in his breast. She deserves far better than him.

The ceremony is dismally long, long enough that it takes a concentrated amount of effort not to constantly shift his weight and to remain regal and imposing. He wears a recently acquired tunic in light gray with loose fitting trousers of a darker shade, feeling a bit like a wolf in sheep’s clothing. Weapons are not permitted in the Sept and he feels rather helpless without Longclaw at his hip; he certainly doesn’t feel as if he belongs here among these painted nobles. He could use the jagged spires of his crown as a weapon, he supposes with amusement, hiding a smile in his fist as he fakes a slight cough.

Eventually, after the High Septon drones on for what feels like eons, Aegon drapes his vibrant red cloak over Daenerys’s back, an exact replica of the cloak she'd just removed, and the room erupts into cheers and it is finally over. Jon breathes a sigh of relief, his head aching beneath the weight of a crown he so rarely wears.

As the newlyweds descend the steps, Daenerys eyes meet his and for the briefest of moments he sees it, the path their lives might have taken had she chosen him for a husband instead. He sees that, while she had her own selfish reasons for doing what she’d done, she’d seen in him things he himself hadn’t realized. He didn’t belong here, in the warmth and excess. She’d known then that he would have come to resent his golden crown and her for forcing him to wear it.

She smiles as the understanding washes through him, her eyes glittering, and Jon feels strangely absolved.

 

* * *

Daenerys meets him in the palace stables, just after dawn, as Jon makes his final preparations before departing. They are mostly alone, his men and hers tactfully going about their business, giving the business of king’s and queen’s a wide berth.

“Thank you for coming, Jon,” she says, a soft almost vulnerable look in her eyes. He can recall seeing such expressions before, when things had been different and easier between them, brief hints of the girl she’d been before the world had torn her apart.

He gives a slight bow of his head and the smallest smile. Gods, how he’d once loved her. It’s so strange to think of now; how the sun had seemed to rise and set with her smile, and how distant that seems from him now. To think he would come to love three women in his lifetime, though he hardly deserved any of them. They were all far stronger than he, of that he is very certain.

“It was an honor… Daenerys.” He says, extending her name between them like a peace offering. There’s a flash of appreciation in her eyes, of affection and regret too, but it’s fleeting. From the folds of her skirts she pulls an iron spired crown with a deep blue sapphire at its center. It’s a more delicate version of his own crown, and he knows at once what it is.

“I found this in the vaults. It belonged to the Queens of Winter and was traded to my ancestors as a sign of peace,” she holds it out to him and Jon is so stunned by the gesture it takes him a moment to take the circlet in hand. It is heavy and cold to the touch, an instant reminder of _home_.

“My brother had to sell my mother’s crown to keep us fed,” Daenerys says with a sad, rather wistful smile. She’d only rarely spoken of Visyres when they were together and Jon can see that his memory pains her still. “I think it killed something inside him… he was never the same after.” Jon turns the circle of iron in his hands, already envisioning it upon Sansa’s brow, thinking how it will suit her far more than his crown has ever suited him. She’d been born to rule, like Daenerys in many ways.

“Your Queen deserves her crown, I think,” she says at last, as if reading his thoughts, and takes his hand. He’s startled to see there are tears in her eyes.

“Thank you,” he says hoarsely and, on impulse, dips his head to press a kiss to her cheek, emotions threatening to overwhelm him. For all that had transpired between them, all the hurt and regret, he is grateful for her, for these final moments between them, like the gentle closing of a well-loved book before it is finally set aside.

She smiles brightly when he pulls away and together they step into the sunlight to bid Aegon, who waits just outside the stables, farewell. Daenerys moves to her new husband’s side and it warms Jon’s heart to see the way Aegon eagerly welcomes her into the curve of his arm. The match is a good one, Jon thinks, despite it all.

“I hope to see more of you, brother,” the young King says and Jon has no doubt he means it, though Gods know he hopes to never go further south than the neck again in his lifetime.

“And you as well… brother.”

They embrace, and Jon mounts his horse and departs. He does not look back as he and his party pass out of the Red Keep’s courtyard, his mind already set toward home and the woman who awaits him there.

* * *

The night he returns to Winterfell, after what feels like years of tedious travel and begrudging visits to several of his vassals, he lies beside Sansa in their bed.

Things are easier in the dark, he thinks. A veil drifts between them, obscuring, yes, but thin enough that they are still there, together. The world fades away behind the shelter of their closed bed curtains, shielding them from the endless expectations of the roles they’d been forced into. What sort of people might they have been, he wonders, had they been born among the common folk? Would he have come to love her as he does?

Something about them rings of destiny, of a wheel turning, of Gods and a purpose beyond their own meager lives. Perhaps that’s why he’d resented it so much at the first, had resented her and her role in his life. He’d grown tired of being twisted and buffeted about by the winds of fate. How foolish it was to resist, he knows; how much happiness had he denied them with his own stupid pride?

“You would have traded all of the North for her,” she says with little preamble. They lie close together, less than an arm’s length between them, but somehow he feels as though they are oceans apart. He only hopes that they are both now paddling in the same direction at least.

“Yes,” he says into the darkness between them. He call feel her recoil slightly and he does not blame her. He often recoils from the truths of his heart, but he no longer wishes to ignore them, it has only ever made matters worse.

The world had been simpler once, he thinks, the line between right and wrong distinct and straight. He wonders when it started to curve for him, when the edges started to blur.

“Did you truly love her so much?”

He smiles slightly and it’s a sharp, joyless thing, all teeth and hard edges. “I loved her, yes… but that wasn’t it, not at the heart of it, anyway…” he trails off and she waits for him to find the words. He wants to reach out and touch her, confirm for himself that she is flesh and blood, warm and alive, but he doesn’t, not when he feels so contaminated by death, by his own failings.

“I was tired when you found me at the Wall,” he says at last. “You recall, I’m sure, my reluctance to retake Winterfell for all that it was our home. I was tired of living then, so tired of it, and I’d just been brought back. Back from the darkness of death in that cold, empty place, which was a relief in many, many ways,” he’s never admitted it out loud, how death had brought such rest, however brief.

“I’d dreamed of vengeance for our family but… I felt so cold, so detached from it all, Sansa, it could hardly touch me. Then you appeared, a living breathing reminder of all we’d lost and all we had yet to regain; a part of me almost resented you for it,” he says this with a hint of dry humor, remembering the fire of her eyes, the conviction on her face. Like a spark in the night, blinding and terrible. Hers had been the face of his childhood transformed and hardened, so like the girl he remembered yet so very, very different. To see her again, after so many years… he’d never experienced such an acute and terrible sense of joy.

 _But there is more yet to tell_ , he reminds himself.

“I resisted her demands to bend the knee, at first, knew it wasn’t truly my place to bend it for all that the Northern Lords had picked me to lead them, but even then it was tempting. So tempting and for all the wrong reasons. It wouldn’t have been just for her help with the Night King or her dragons or because she was beautiful, but because I was so _tired_ , Sansa. I didn’t want the throne, I never truly wanted it, but I felt… helpless, carried along by a stream through rough current, just fighting to stay above the water. I wanted to do what I could to save us from the dead, and I bent the knee in part to do that, but… also because I didn’t want a crown, I didn’t want to lead men anymore. I was _tired_ , and I think that is one of my greatest shames; not that I bent the knee, but my reasons for it.”

The words fill him with shame even now, the cowardice of it, the willingness to let another finally, _finally_ take up a fight he felt he’d been struggling through alone for nearly all his life. Oh he’d known then what an invaluable tool Daenerys stood to be, what her dragons could mean for them. He hadn’t doubted she could lead them, or that she could take and keep the Iron Throne and make the world better for it. This wasn’t what drove him, not in the end. And for that he could not forgive himself.

With the span of years and distance now between them, he wonders how much that relief had played into his feelings for Daenerys –finally someone to relieve him of the burden of leadership, finally someone else to play the sacrificial savior. She’s easy to love, he supposes, powerful, beautiful, and compassionate in her way… a born leader. He was certainly not the first man to fall under her sway, and he’s certain he will not be the last. She is like a tidal wave, gathering everything to her, a force of nature that sweeps everyone around her into wild upheaval before casting them out behind her.

Sansa is not like that, he thinks. She’s like a gentle stream that carries a quiet, calm, but powerful current. Like a spring morning heated by the strength of a patient sun. A sun that can warm as well as burn.  

“I’m sorry Sansa,” his voice breaks as he speaks. When was the last time he shed tears? He wonders. It feels as though a lifetime has passed since he last mourned, since he allowed himself to feel grief. “Not just for that, but for so many things after. For Daenerys, after we were married-“

She presses two fingers to his lips, a shock of contact that immediately stuns him into silence. “I don’t begrudge her your past, Jon,” she says, “I only… I only want your future.”

He pulls in a breath that seems to rattle through him, tears of shame and relief and terrible aching love leaping to his eyes. “I hardly deserve such forgiveness. My heart is a broken, tattered wreck and it’s all I really have to offer you.”

She makes a bitter, huffing sound and he feels the heat of her breath on his face. “You are not the only one who bears guilt, who feels less than worthy to hold or give love.”

“My father and mother did not marry for affection,” she reminds him gently, her fingers shift to shape with her hand over his face. “It was something they built over years and years, perhaps not the stuff of song and high tales, but stronger for it, _better_ for it.”

Every time he thinks he knows who she is, Sansa reveals some new facet of herself to him, some hidden depth he’d never even guessed it. She’s become a conglomerate of different people to him over the years. From spoilt sister, to the last desperate reminder of his family, to begrudging wife, to mother of his son, and finally to the woman who’s managed to take his heart and slowly help him rebuild and reshape it. He recalls suddenly the crown Daenerys had given him, and decides then that they will hold a coronation, that if he cannot wed her again, he will offer her his fealty in another way.

“We’re just a patch work of scars, aren’t we?” he says, echoing words that seem a lifetime in the past, and reaches for her, reaches for her though he is certain he does not deserve her. An arm, the dip of a waist, the curve of a smooth, delicate cheek.

“Perhaps,” she says, reaching for him in turn. “But we are still here… and we have each other.”

“Yes,” he says pulling her carefully to him. “We have each other.”

 

**Author's Note:**

> Reviews are lovely and so are you! <3


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